The iDevGames New Year's Contest

So I had an idea. We can simply have both contests. Carlos and iDG will host the Unity contest and then for those of us who don't wish to participate, we can have our community contest. That way Carlos can focus on the large contest with OTEE and all that, and we'll just make our games for the fun of it. Everyone wins. Anyone agree or disagree?

Just my opinion, but I think we should stick together as a community and only have one contest at a time. Carlos has noted that OMG will follow soon, so if you don't want to enter the 21DL "Unity" contest I suggest preparing for OMG during this time (such as putting your team together, deciding on your game design, etc).

KittyMac Wrote:Just my opinion, but I think we should stick together as a community and only have one contest at a time. Carlos has noted that OMG will follow soon, so if you don't want to enter the 21DL "Unity" contest I suggest preparing for OMG during this time (such as putting your team together, deciding on your game design, etc).

I suppose that's a good point. Does the OMG ever have themes? Just going to get a start designing .

Regarding whether the contest is Unity based or not: this is of course at the discretion of the iDG community. I talked about a contest with Carlos, and decided to ask you guys rather than just announcing something (that no one might be interested in).

Regarding speed of learning Unity: I have to say that I've seen so many developers get up to speed with Unity in a couple of days, that I wouldn't worry about that at all. There are so many tutorials, examples, and the documentation is very complete by now, that there really shouldn't be anything holding one back.

Oh, and just to have it on record: we'll give trial versions of Unity Pro which last until two weeks after the contest ends to anyone who wants to participate (just write me a mail at david@otee.dk, subject "iDG 21DL").

David and I have finalized the contest structure and prizes. Once again, our community is gonna be VERY happy. We've taken all the feedback and the contest will reflect a win-win for everyone (my guiding principle for all our contests.) I'll be working on the rules and marketing this weekend, with an announcement on Monday by iDevGames and OTEE. I recommend you clear your schedules!

1) My Unity is a little rusty, but is requiring the source code feasible? How does Unity breakdown when you start stripping art assets from it? And what does "source code" imply, the entire project or the just script files included in it?

2) Yes. Shareware is still what the majority of iDevGamers should strive for, and shareware titles need to try and minimize their download size.

As KittyMac says, this is a bit interesting because the source code tends to be dependent on the way the game was set up in the editor, and that means giving out the project folder, which means giving out the assets too (as the project won't work properly if any bits are missing).

That said, even just releasing the source code may have some value.

Quote:2) Any size limitation for entries?

My current project is 15MB zipped when built as a universal binary, and that's with fairly minimal sounds and only moderately complex graphics. It is possible to make a smaller game, but I'd expect the size for anything with music and lots of textures to be 20MB or more.

Maybe the limit should be 30-40MB to discourage people from making really gargantuan binaries!

For reference, each of the Big Bang Brain Games is around 30 megabytes. Eight megabytes or so of that is the universal binary runtime.

The source of the Brain Games would probably be of varying degrees of usefulness. I don't think in general source code has found much use from previous contests, so I don't think it's worth putting another restriction on it. I would encourage people to put their useful bits up on the Unify wiki instead.

So let me be clear, is it possible to "pack up" source/project file into a single download without needing to also include copyrighted items with Unity? And if so, anyone downloading such project/source would indeed find it beneficial in learning Unity?

It's problematic. When you report a bug to OTEE, for instance, you generally have to zip up your entire project. (You can delete the Temporary Assets folder, but even so the result is fairly large.) Anything else is more trouble than it's worth.

It is possible to export certain pieces of a project, for instance to export a set of related assets. And of course you can release scripts and shader source code. But requiring all or nothing is probably preferable.

Considering that this is a 21DL contest, it should be ok to require the entire Unity project. The only real concern devs will have (I think) is that since assets cannot be stripped easily they'll need to be included. However, since it is only 21 days long, the included assets would most likely be in a draft state anyway. And so long as whatever license agreements are allowed that they protect the owner's copyright of the assets.